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Lower Mainland mayors consider bridge and ‘zone’ based road tolls

VANCOUVER — Drivers in the Lower Mainland might be taxed through a series of bridge tolls or a zone-and-distance-based charge using technology that tracks the whereabouts of every registered vehicle in the region.

The idea’s been given the name “mobility pricing,” which boils down to charging drivers a fee to reduce congestion and generate additional funding for transportation infrastructure.

It’s a topic that’s long been discussed by regional politicians with the regional Mayors’ Council, which had tasked a commission to study precisely how this type of tolling would work. The resulting report, released Thursday, recommended options expected to cost drivers up to $8 per day.

The bridge tolling method would target multiple crossings across the Lower Mainland, with the report focusing on the Lions Gate, Iron-Workers, Arthur Laing, Oak, Knight, Queensborough, Pattullo, Port Mann, George Massey, Alex Fraser, Pitt River and Golden Ears bridges, and the North Road arterial bordering Burnaby and Coquitlam. Tolls would range from 36 cents to $8.27 per use, depending on time of day and direction of travel.

This plan would cost up to $350 million in capital costs, with ongoing costs of up to $200 million, though annual revenues are expected to exceed $1 billion.

The zone-and-distance-based model would charge anywhere from 2 cents per kilometre to 40 cents per kilometre depending on where in the Lower Mainland the driver is, with variations in price to cover rush hours. One scenario in the report suggested Vancouver would be the highest priced zone, with Burnaby and the Tri-Cities second, parts of the North Shore as the third, Richmond fourth, Surrey fifth, the Ridge-Meadows area sixth, with everywhere else in the Lower Mainland sitting on the cheapest tier of pricing.

The second plan would cost up to $700 million in capital costs, with annual operating costs of up to $500 million, though annual revenues should be somewhat higher.

Lawyer Allan Seckel headed the mobility pricing report and said the zoning option would present “technological challenges,” including identifying a device that would track which zone a driver is in and how far they’re going without risking an intrusion on privacy.

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“It seems at least possible, from what we did learn, that the information can be anonymized inside the car so the government would never see where you were, just how far you’ve driven,” Seckel said.

Regardless of which plan is chosen, regional politicians agree this type of road tax would be a hard sell to the public.

“It’s a controversial and difficult topic,” said New Westminster Mayor Jonathan Cote.

“The public does have discomforts with the concept of mobility pricing and it’s going to take some time to generate trust and acceptance from the general public.”

North Vancouver District Mayor Richard Walton, meanwhile, is worried mobility pricing will become a political hot potato. He believes the only way to push what’s essentially a new tax through would be through a bipartisan process, lest opposing political parties try to shut the tax down for the sake of being in opposition.

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“The politics of this are complex and daunting,” Walton said.

Surrey Mayor Linda Hepner believes the process, given how the idea is being pitched by a joint body of municipal governments, will succeed.

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“This has recognition of folk from all sorts of areas ... so it is definitely non-partisan,” Hepner said. “It is not for the faint of heart, and we recognize that.”

What is known is how if mobility pricing goes ahead, the region may be able to reduce its congestion by 20 to 25 per cent, plus raise potentially millions per year in revenue for the multi-billion-dollar regional transportation infrastructure plan.

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